I Can't Hear You

Author's note: All sexual players in this fictional life-and-death story are over 18 years old but there ain't much sex here, just revenge. This one is for you BTB fans. Ideas expressed are not necessarily the author's. Enjoy.

I blame rock'n'roll and the Army for my cheating wife.

You are thinking, sure, blame everything but yourself. While I am at it, why not blame coloreds, Jews, Arabs, orientals, the CIA, and alien telepaths?

No. I am nuts but I am not that nuts. What I was, was almost deaf.

That is where music and the military come in.

Puberty and rock'n'roll hit me simultaneously. I rocked as a guitarist and equipment tech. I could bore you with name-dropping, with Mesa/Boogie this and Alembic that and whatever other gear. Big deal. It was loud. I played it and I fixed it. And it was loud. And I got laid a lot. And it was loud.

It also was not a sustainable career. Events persuaded me at age twenty-four to enlist in the US Army as a communications electronics technician. I already knew audio electronics; military gear was no big thing.

I was assigned to a combat unit with the slogan: FIELD ARTILLERY MEANS NEVER HAVING TO SAY I MISSED. The rolling stock were 155mm self-propelled howitzers. These looked sort of like battle tanks but with big guns. Real big loud fucking guns.

Mostly I worked on gear in our motor pool's radio shop. But if stuff broke in the field, guess who made house calls? Yup, good old Doctor Sparks. Me. And if repairs were needed during live fire? I was there, earplugs stuffed futilely into my earholes while massive concussions shook me. Artillerymen, known as gun-bunnies, have a well-deserved reputation for being nuts, their brains shaken loose by shock.

Did I stop listening to loud music while I hung around real big loud fucking guns? Duh. Some good bands played at on- and off-post clubs. Good loud bands. And I still got laid a lot.

One enlistment was enough, not just for me, but for the Army. I flunked the hearing portion of my pre-re-enlistment physical. Sayonara, motherfuckers.

Post-separation events persuaded me to set up shop in the quaint, cheap-trendy Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Oregon. I leased a little two-story building, shop space downstairs, apartment upstairs.

"Set up shop" -- I know what you are thinking. "Oho, he does security electronics and surveillance cameras and stuff, and that's how he caught his wife cheating." Wrong. I just did normal electronics maintenance, anything except loud sound systems. And I did not have a wife yet.

I found a wife the easy way -- I ran into her. No, not with a motor vehicle. We were each jogging on sidewalks in a storefront-business area. We intersected at a blind corner. Maybe, if I was not half-deaf, I might have heard her approaching footfalls. Maybe. Maybe not.

Pow! Her tits impacted me at least a quarter-second before the rest of our bodies collided.

I helped the leggy blonde up from her unwanted sitting position on the sidewalk below the corner light post. Like me, she wore bright running gear from the nearby Columbia sportswear outlet store.

"Umm, I'm really sorry, err, are you alright, umm?" I stammered.

I was almost tongue-tied because she was fucking GORGEOUS! I mentioned here that I have been laid a lot, and that is true, with many different women of varied ethnicities and attributes. But none compared to the vision of divine pulchritude dusting herself off before my very eyes.

Shoulder-high to my six-foot-four frame. Smoky blue eyes in a sharply smart oval face more dazed than disturbed. A body to die for, including the afore-mentioned prominent breasts, but narrowing to a flat-bellied waist, generous-enough hips, and taut runner's legs. And that golden halo of hair...

"Uh yeah, let me see," she twisted and stretched her divine body, "yeah, I seem to be intact and I don't feel bruised. I guess I just wasn't paying attention." Her Bluetooth earbuds had popped loose.

She appraised me with those amazing eyes. She saw a tall thin square-head guy, his face adorned with wire-rim glasses, topped by an unruly black mop, probably gazing idiotically at her. "How about you? Any damage?" She took my arm -- and felt my pulse!

"I seem okay, I think. Are you a nurse?"

"No, I push numbers at an accountancy down the street. But I took first aid classes and I always like to check pulses. Yours is running sort of fast."

Yes, my heart was racing, and not because I hurt. I felt a pulse in my penis, too. I tried to suppress that.

"I'm just... I've got to calm a little. Uh, by the way, I'm Ben. Ben Kubelski."

"Hi Ben, glad to meet you, even this way. I'm Marva. Marva Ferris. You live or work around here?"

"My shop's just around the corner. I live upstairs. Funny I haven't run into you before. Err, I mean... no, I don't mean like this, but..."

Her laughter was as musical as her body was glorious.

"I know what you mean! I just transferred here from across town. I could have commuted from my old place in the Pearl district but I moved in with some so-so roommates here so I can walk to work. I didn't expect to run into guys this way."

"Yeah, this has been an interesting meeting. Look, I've got to go open my shop now. My morning jog time is over."

"And I've got to clean up and get to the office." She finished brushing herself off.

"Ahh, I hope I don't seem too pushy, but could I interest you in lunch later? There's good bistro food at the Oak Bottoms Pub." I gestured at the building facade across the street. "I usually close up between one and two."

"One's a good time for me. Right over there? Sure, I'll meet you then." She felt my pulse again. "A little slower. Good. Don't die before you buy me lunch, okay?"

OBP had a noisy lunchtime crowd. Sandy the waitress was as sultry and snarky as always; she seated us between chatterers. Marva and I had to almost shout to be heard.

"What? I can't hear you."

"I said, do you ever miss not being in the Army any more?"

"Oh, that! No, it wasn't bad, but I'm sure glad to be a civilian again."

That was our first date. Our second date was that night, a fine late-happy-hour feed down the road at Garibaldi's. Our third date was breakfast the next morning. Breakfast in bed. My bed.

Two breakfasts in bed, actually. First, I ate her and she ate me. Then I crawled out and finessed an omelet and country fries and then crawled back in. We fed each other morsels that sometimes fell and needed to be slurped up. Yes, we were a bit messy. So fucking what? We clicked!

Marva abandoned her so-so roommates and moved in with me at the end of the month. I proposed a month later. We wed before the end of summer.

I should describe the good-sized apartment above my shop. The living room was in front alongside the kitchen-dining room overlooking the street. The master bedroom and bath were in back with a small grassy yard below. Two smaller bedrooms and a shared bath faced the hallway off the stairs climbing from the street door.

We designated one of the smaller bedrooms as "the nursery" for if-and-when we had kids. The other was a spare bedroom for infrequent guests or whatever. I stored special electronics under that spare bed and in that room's closet. 'Special' means sensitive gear I just did not want to leave in the shop, gear I absolutely did not want stolen.

Marva and I had a good life. The first year just seemed to whiz by. I know Marva was sometimes frustrated at my increasing deafness. She tired of having to yell at me to be heard.

"What? I can't hear you." I shook my head again.

So did she. "I said..."

Too many of our conversations proceeded thus.

The condition is called TINNITUS. Ringing in the ears. More than ringing, really. Do you remember those old cartoons with steamwhistle factories exploding? That was about what I constantly heard. Oh, my fucking head...

I tried for improvement. I tested various high-end hearing aids. None helped much. Marva continued yelling.

Life was good otherwise. We settled into patterns. Fuck in the morning. Eat breakfast and go to work. Marva's office shifted lunchtime to straddle noon, from 11:30 AM to 12:30 PM, while I kept my one-to-two closing time to accommodate lunchtime walk-in customers, so we only lunched together on weekends. But after work we dined nicely, and often went out dancing, and returned home for hot fuckfests to drive us into sleep. Yes, life was good.

One of my regular customers was soundman for a punk club with atrocious acoustics and a screaming clientele. He passed me a tip.

"Hey Benny, your ears are still totally fucked, right?"

"What? I can't hear you?" This was my common punchline now.

"I said..." Sam raised his voice enough. "Well, I know this gal, she's a medical researcher, works with nerve damage, that kind of shit. And she told me her group's got an experimental treatment that re-grows nerves. They're looking for test subjects to try out the stuff. No injections, nothing invasive, but she says they put their lotion or potion or whatever on deaf rats' ears and now they can hear again. So I thought maybe you might..."

Yes, I was definitely interested. I visited the lab over several of my lunch hours. I did not tell Marva about this; I did not want to raise her hopes if there was a chance of failure.

Guess what. It worked! The tinnitus decreased rapidly. My hearing tested as totally normal within a week of the first squirt of juice into my ear canals.

The good news came on a Thursday. I did not tell Marva yet. I planned a celebration, a very quiet celebration, for Friday night. Dinner in an almost-silent Zen eatery. Us whispering back and forth. No more shouting!

Friday morning passed as usual. A walk-in customer arrived a little before noon. As we discussed his problem, I noticed a squeaking noise from upstairs. It seemed to come from the 'spare' bedroom area. I could not turn the client away to investigate immediately. He left a few minutes later and I switched on my spare-room spy-cam.

"Hey," you might protest, "you said you don't do security electronics and surveillance cameras and that kind of stuff. You lied!"

Not exactly. I do not focus on security gear. But I have LOTS of expensive equipment stored upstairs, and I have a little spy-cam aimed to watch it, just in case. I almost never bothered to watch it because... well, because I was lazy and trusting. But I watched it now.

And I saw. For the first time, I saw my incredibly gorgeous wife Marva being missionary-fucked by some hairy-assed guy. That squeaking sound I heard? That was the song of the bouncing bedsprings.

I felt my blood pressure and pulse spike. I saw red. I heard a roaring in my ears, totally different than the old tinnitus -- a roaring of rage.

But I did not go nuts, not then. I switched on the spy-cam's audio.

And I heard. I heard Marva's orgasmic moaning and hairy-butt's triumphant grunting. When they finished their fluid exchange, they talked. And I heard.

"He really is a moron. Every morning and every night, he thinks he's got you all to himself. And every noon, *I* have you. What a sucker!"

"Yeah, Jimmy, we've had lots of fun these last few months. All because he's frozen to his schedules, and too deaf to hear shit. He just doesn't have a fucking clue! Sure, I love him, but I love your big dick more! I can't wait to get you again tomorrow."

I heard more like that. So, she had been cheating for months? And they are going to continue? I don't think so...

You see why I blamed amps and the Army for Marva cheating? If I was not so deaf, I would have heard her better. She would not have yelled at me so much. She would not have turned to Jimmy in frustration.

I tried to convince myself of that. But she still cheated.

I acted totally normal that evening. Mostly deaf, as usual. We dined nicely. We went out dancing. We came home and fucked like rabid weasels. We slept. We fucked again in the morning. Marva went to work.

I went to work, too, but in the spare bedroom.

I thought police might be curious so I prepared the scene. Removing the WiFi spy-cam only took a minute; no evidence of surveillance remained. I carefully rubbed some wiring to wear through the insulation, not a lot, just enough. I carefully positioned the wiring to sit 'accidentally' against the bedsprings and frame. I hooked the wiring to a high-power transformer appropriate to feed the room's gear. I made sure the gear was protected by quick-blow fuses.

Yes, I wired the bed.

And just before noon, the power went out in the shop and the block. But not before Marva and Jimmy had rocked and rolled on the bed, and shorted-out the wires, and received fifty fucking kilowatts of AC streaming through their bodies, nicely frying them.

Their electrocuted screams filtered down from upstairs. I cupped my hand to my ear and said quietly:

"What? I can't hear you."

Yes, the police were curious. Yes, I distracted their curiosity. Such a terrible accident! If only I were more careful about the wires! If only they had not used that bed! But I was well-known to be nearly deaf, and there was no way I could have known of their affair, was there? No, of course not.

Was I a murderer? No. I was a trapper. I set a trap. Marva and Jimmy fell into that trap. Regrets.

Am I nuts? I hope not. I still act almost deaf. But just to be safe, I moved elsewhere and started a new life. Somewhere people never heard of me. What? I can't hear you...

This piece is the flip-side of (RIGHT) UNDER HIS EYES which many BTB'ers really hated. Maybe this will soothe their anger. Your constructive comments are always welcome but death threats and unreasoned bashes will be ignored. If you liked this sick little story, please VOTE! Thanks.

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